


how roger learned to stop worrying about the bomb and embrace rope bondage

by fingersfallingupwards



Series: body language [2]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Aftercare, Angst, BDSM, Because it's the 80s, But Nothing Too Bad, Canon Era, Dom/sub, F/M, Imperfect BDSM etiquette, Kink as Character Study, Nightmares, Nuclear Weapons, Rope Bondage, Sexual and Non-Sexual bondage, Smut, Sub Roger Taylor (Queen), Suspension, Suspension Bondage, about, but Dom is a good dom, canonical too, did i menton Dom dommes?, it's all in the title folks, mild sub drop, no beta we die like roger's rap career, poor rog, sub space, warm and human bdsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29083116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingersfallingupwards/pseuds/fingersfallingupwards
Summary: “It can be quite intense, cher, to be tied up and helpless.” There’s the gleam in Dominique’s eyes again, something she won’t or can’t voice, and yet an implication that bears over Roger all the same. “Especially if you are suspended.”Roger's having nightmares about the nuclear holocaust. Dominique wants to help him unwind by sharing a private hobby.
Relationships: Dominique Beyrand/Roger Taylor
Series: body language [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2076948
Comments: 20
Kudos: 24





	how roger learned to stop worrying about the bomb and embrace rope bondage

**Author's Note:**

> _“If I used to have a bad dream, it was usually about being involved in a holocaust and trying to grab everyone I cared about.”_ –[Roger Taylor in a 1984 Jim Ladd interview](https://queenarchives.com/qa/xx-xx-1984-jim-ladd-innerview/)
> 
> Please read the tags. Roger's safe word is stop because it's the 80s and net groups are not a thing.
> 
> ~~Unbeta'd due to levels of up-my-own-assness.~~

+  
Despite the varied group of eccentrics Roger claims as friends and associates, the most outrageous cure for sleeplessness comes from his girlfriend, Dominique. Roger’s weathered suggestions from the useful, “Stop eating shit before bed,” from Crystal, the misguided “I just sort of think about the day, the things I said…” from an equally sleepless looking Brian, the unaimed, “Buy a cat” from Freddie between the sips of champagne, and the ambiguous “Why not lemonade?” from John.

He didn’t actually ask for advice (knows better to, with this lot), but everyone’s noticed the purple ringing his under-eyes, the puffiness of skin caused by more than growing the tiniest bit older. It’s _possible_ Roger’s been snappish and short, but it’s hardly his fault they’re all off-tempo idiots. When Ratty obsequiously offered to fluff Roger’s pillow on their last tour, he’d almost got the flat end of Roger’s shoe for his trouble. There had been plenty to throw his shoe at on that tour, with their uneven set-list mashing hard rock with the dry disco tracks. God, he’s glad they’re on a break so he can work to forget that mess and repair his sleep schedule…

Except, he still isn’t sleeping, and everyone has to notice and parcel out their shite advice during the house party Roger now regrets throwing. It’s hardly worth the joy of competing luxuries with Freddie when he’s casting his eyes sideways and suggesting face creams that would be just the thing for Roger’s ghoulishness.

“Now you’re calling me ghastly in my own house,” Roger groans.

“No, never a ghast. Those gross little flesh-eaters,” Freddie replies, fussily wicking a drop of champagne from his glass. His eyes cut up, teasing. “More vampy.”

Roger smiles. “A winsome kind of flesh-eater then?” He laughs along, but it’s short-lived. Weariness drags everything down, cuts short even easy moments of joy. He can't remember how many parties blurred by on tour in this way. He’s caught staring at the wall, not even thinking when Freddie nudges his hip.

“You should see a doctor, dear.” Freddie bites his lip. “Even if it’s just a sex one.”

“There’s nothing the matter,” Roger says. “Just getting used to being back.”

Freddie doesn’t buy it any more than anyone else has, but he drifts away from the rows of sleek guitars Roger meant to gloat about and back downstairs without another word. Roger stares at the gleaming collection and rubs his eyes. A shrink is the last thing he needs.

He knows well the source of the problem, but there’s nothing much a doctor can do about nuclear Armageddon. 

Furthermore, nightmares about the stark landscape of nuclear fallout aren’t the sort of topic Roger finds good for company, let alone his friends. Besides, they all know his concerns about the nuclear arms race, have listened with varying degrees of interest to his dissection of Thatcher’s gobshite advice to paint the windows (as though that would do anything against radioactive fallout), and his work with CND and how they might get involved if they cared at all about seeing another sunrise.

That this nuclear fear has seeped deep and anxious into the cracks of his mind only to creep out at night isn’t a detail he feels like clarifying. This strange frontier looming over them, ready to gobble a future before Felix even has a chance to live it…

It’s not their business if he worries overmuch.

It is Dominique’s business, unfortunately. It’s her who his tossing disturbs from slumber. Half-asleep, she lets him cling to her, mouthing against her skin about how he could only hold her and Felix and watch the nuke descend like a meteor, flecked with fire and leaking poison green _—_ She pets his sweat-soaked skin and rides out the night with him, and she almost has a matching set of circles around her eyes for her trouble.

She’s the only one who knows the cause… which is why her bizarre advice comes as even more of a shock, although it starts simply enough.

“Roger, I think maybe you need to unwind,” she suggests after everyone leaves. There’s a second leg of the party in a new London club, but Dominique had complained of a headache and Roger took the opportunity to stay behind rather than press himself. Of course, her head seems fine now as she pours herself more wine over the kitchen counter.

“I unwind all the time!” he protests. His hand strokes down her forearm. “Come to think, we unwind together quite a bit.”

Dominique raises an amused brow. “We do… but it doesn’t seem to help any.”

Roger pulls away as if scalded, inexplicably perturbed. It’s true, and actually, their sex life has suffered from Roger’s sleeplessness and mental preoccupation…

He wishes there were ways to apologize for this that won't make him feel lesser for what he can give the woman he loves.

“Well,” he mutters, gruff. He’ll top himself off after all. Roger peaked early in the night with John, but he’s not as drunk as he wishes he was for this conversation. He trusts Dominique to keep his secrets and never wield moments of vulnerability against him. Still, it doesn’t make sharing them easy, even when their home is empty and theirs again. 

He continues. “What did you mean by unwinding then?”

“I thought maybe we might… amp it up a little. Perhaps we can really tire you out.” Dominique’s cheeks are a little red, bold in a way Roger finds appealing.

Roger’s preoccupied but he’s not so out of his mind that he’d turn away a pretty offer like that. “How do you mean? I thought we were pretty amped.”

“We are,” she allows. There’s a twist to her lip though, something between coy and patronizing that makes Roger both irritated and intrigued. Like she’s indulging him. “I thought we might try to push you a little further in the bedroom.”

No one’s ever accused him of not pushing enough in the bedroom. What’s she getting at? “If this is about anal—” he starts.

“I want to try tying you up,” she finally clarifies.

Roger doesn’t pause. “With handcuffs?” If she thinks this is his first time being chained to someone’s bedpost, she’s quite mistaken about Roger’s varied experiences. In fact, a particularly enthused off-duty police constable he met in Dearborn comes to mind. He takes a tipple of wine to hide whatever memories might be playing over his face.

“No, with rope.”

“Rope?” That does give Roger pause and he lets the wine swish in his mouth before swallowing. “You mean like… the shiba-whatsit the Japanese do?”

“Shibari,” Dominique supplies, the word rolling off her tongue richly accented. “Yes. I didn’t know you’d done it before.” Her eyes are darker; narrow and unfamiliar.

“I haven’t. I did see it once.” In the cavalcade of Japanese clubs and sex, he distinctly remembers encountering a woman done up in a complex lattice of rope. Bound and laid out on the floor in a small ‘s’ like someone forgot her there. The way the ropes framed her breasts was mouthwatering, and he remembers watching her brown eyes open to see their group viewing her, entranced, and she’d moaned then, softly, and extended her body as if asking them to see… Roger feels a little heady just from remembering, except Dominique asked him if he’d—

“You want to truss _me_ up like that?” he asks, setting his glass down.

“Yes,” she says, as though it’s the natural course. Roger grimaces.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to tie up you? You know, the more I think about it, the more I think it would suit,” he says, hands wandering to her arms and sides. She would look stunning, her dark skin standing out against the red rope, breasts pert and on end.

While not extracting herself from his wandering, hungry hands, she does catch them from exploring under her shirt.

“The purpose is to get you to unwind, not me.” She grips his hand, her thin fingers working over his knuckles.

“And how does winding me up in ropes accomplish that?”

“It can be quite intense, cher, to be tied up and helpless.” There’s the gleam in her eyes again, something she won’t or can’t voice, and yet an implication that bears over Roger all the same. What does she mean? He’s still not quite sold on the idea when she adds, “Especially if you are suspended.”

“Suspended,” he utters. For a moment the meaning doesn’t register, and when he does, he startles. “You mean… you mean tied up and hanging? In the air?” Honestly, the idea makes him think of ham hocks hanging in the butchery or zip-gliding. Stationary zip-gliding. It’s ridiculous, really.

The tension in her grip falters, but she nods, a contrasting coolness settling over her expression like frost. It adds distance despite their nearness. He tries to bury the amusement he feels at the idea. This isn’t a joke, he doesn’t think. Not offered offhand like the poor advice he received from everyone else tonight. Maybe it’s the distance she puts between them, but it pulls him in closer.

“Well,” Roger admits, trying to sort it in his mind. “That does sound thrilling.” Slightly. At the very least, more thrilling than just laying out between bedposts.

Her hand tightens, and there’s no mistaking the keen interest in her body language. “It is,” she avows.

“Leave me hanging there, all out for you to have your way with,” Roger teases.

Dominique smiles. “If you want.”

“Well, of course I want. The point is to get me off, right?” Roger’s uncertain which turn they’d taken from _unwinding_ and _winding_ that meant otherwise.

“No, if you want, I’ll help with that, but you might not. It’s quite intense, cher _._ You can wear out from the act alone. Many people find it emotionally cathartic.”

There are few moments when Roger has felt really, quite stumped by Dominique, but this is one of them. He can’t imagine a universe where he’d not want to get off, especially with Dominique painting such a picture. Surely mutual satisfaction is the point of such bedroom games?

She laughs at his expression, eyes bright. “We’ll see. There’s much we should discuss beforehand. We may not even get into suspension. Maybe binding you will be enough to make you, ah, relax.”

Roger frowns. Relaxing isn’t the word he’d choose for getting off, and he’s quite in the mood for that now after remembering the girl in the club. Dominique seems to be too, the way her hands are tight and kneading his hands, eyes still dark. It makes him feel hot and purposeful in a way he hasn’t for at least two weeks.

“Can’t we just go upstairs and work it out like adults? I think it does sound quite interesting after all.”

She chuckles again. “No, we need a little more preparation. It’s not as simple as slotting a into b.”

He pulls her closer, rotating her so her back is against him and letting his hands wander properly. “There’s something about the basics. I’m not so bad at slotting, or so I’ve heard.”

“Oh, mon chou _.”_ Roger wrinkles his nose at the appellation. Cabbage. He hates that Frenchism, but that’s forgotten when she shifts up and he discovers the soft, slightly striped skin of her stomach beneath the blouse.

“You want to try then?” she asks.

“Oh, definitely.” He’s kissing the place where her neck and ear meet. Between her loaded glances and the promise of a new thrill, he’s certainly interested.

“Roger, you must promise me something.”

“What?” he murmurs, distracted. She stills though, forcing his head away from her skin to make proper eye-contact.

“If you’re ever uncomfortable or you ever want to stop, you must tell me. Even if it’s only when we’re discussing it.”

She’s quite serious, far more serious than she’s ever been about sex. He cannot fathom why, but if it matters to her, agreeing is the least he can do.

“Of course.” He can’t imagine what would lead him to quit before the outset but voicing his complaints has never been particularly difficult for him. “If I don’t like something, you’ll be the first to know.”

A drawn-out sigh escapes her as she says, “We’re going to have so much fun.”

And that, more than anything, Roger is always up for.

+

When she worked full-time, Dominique was preternaturally on top of her assignments as a personal assistant. It’s perhaps what made her so invaluable to Richard Branson even when her time would have been better suited to coming along with Roger on every tour to reap the excitement. Still, when he joins her for coffee in the living room and finds her pouring over some hand-bound books of women hogtied, Roger isn’t surprised by her initiative really. Aroused, certainly.

“Roger.” She hums as he eats up the line of her neck. His hands are making a tactile study of her lace lingerie through the fabric of her shirt. It’s the royal blue, he decides at length, having felt it up quite thoroughly.

“You quite certain it isn’t you that should be done up?” Roger asks, glancing to the book in her lap and the pointed tips of a woman’s breasts as she hangs down from a metal bar. He still can’t imagine himself in her position. Some part of it feels more like a waste than anything else. Maybe he can wear Dominique down…

Dominique smirks, reading his thoughts. “I’m quite sure.” She pats his surveying hands. “How did you sleep?”

Roger releases her, unable to help the grimace that twists his face. “Fine.”

She knows better than to pry, but she squeezes his thigh as he slumps beside her on the couch. Last night had been quiet, but almost worse for the fact he hadn’t woken her up.

Often the nightmare is a long, creeping horror. He’ll be driving in town or having coffee or whatever beige, mundane thing and then, the way he might note an airplane’s vapor trail, he’ll catch sight of a bomb cresting the horizon. Dread knocks into him, as he understands immediately it’s _the_ nuclear device. Sleek metal stamped in black military font, gleaming a morphos moniker _Davycrocket-B41-Trident-Fatman-Firstlightning_. Its hungry mouth tilts at England. Coming for his home. He’s running without remembering when he started.

The nuke’s arc is unnatural, targeted, and crawling nearer in slow-motion. Every time he glances back, it’s a meaningful bit closer and bigger, consuming the space in his field of vision. Roger runs. He runs and runs around the corners of the dreamscape, panting, out of breath, shoving past people that blur and trying to find his family, _why can’t he find his family?_

Right as the silvery tip of the dreaded thing breaches the skyline, he’s located Dominique, Felix, his mother, and Clare and he clutches them, fingers wrapping around to pull them into him like his shoulders might bear the brunt of the fallout. Even for having found his family, he can’t keep a grip on all of them; his hands are too slick and their skin slips around his shaking fingers. His arms are not big enough to cover all he needs to hold.

Finally, when he manages to get them nearly within his protective circle, usually that’s when he wakes up, with fire and screams. And it never mattered at all whether he held them or not.

That’s usually how it goes, gruesome technicolor in his mind every odd night.

…Sometimes though, sometimes he survives the flames and he stirs in a valley of ash, blown out buildings and twisted metal. A sick awareness that the dust in the air is Dom, is Felix, is the life he knew.

As guilty as he feels for waking up Dominique with fire, sleeping through it to the dusty aftermath is infinitely worse.

He’d held Felix for a long time this morning before coming downstairs and even that...

“Roger,” Dominique murmurs, and Roger’s attention comes back from the distant reaches in his mind. His eyes feel wet, a little glassy and he can’t remember when Dominique started stroking his back. He takes a deep breath, wondering if it isn’t too early for his second cigarette. Dominique sighs with sympathy but continues their discussion as though he didn’t step into a field of horror while sitting on the sofa. There’s nothing to say she hasn’t already whispered in the night.

“I was thinking of this for you,” she says instead, pointing to the page. Roger shakes himself and willingly takes up the distraction offered. In black and white profile, a woman stands with her head bowed. Over the lines of her chest, rope crosses and double backs, a fine web of grey just a shade light enough that Roger wants to think it’s red in reality. Her arms are forced to her sides and bound there with rings of rope that crawl up her skin. It is… appealing, in a way, artful. To look at though, not to imagine himself in.

“You think this one?” Roger says. “Not sure I have the assets to pull it off.” Really, the most appealing part is how her breasts are framed so perfectly.

“Oh, I think you do,” she disagrees, playful. “And this is one of the more beautiful patterns in my opinion.” Her hands slip up to his forearms like she’s imagining them twisted around by her own cunning and Roger’s admittedly flattered. He’s never grown out of his vanity, although it’s changed now that he’s a parent. When he was even ten years younger, he would have worn doilies if they made him look drippingly good. He has _some_ shame now. Still, that part of himself nudges his head into nodding and he imagines for the first time what it might be like for the rope to press against his sides, lace up the planes of his chest.

He would look good, it’s true. And his muscles would probably bulge in that position. Dominique seems to be thinking along similar lines, massaging the flexible muscle of his bicep as she stares at the book. Although, it’s less like massage, and more… prospecting.

In her eyes, the unfamiliar sharpness he’d glanced at last night glows like a hungry ember. It’s as though the sun suddenly pivoted and illuminated an aspect of her face previously shadowed.

“I never knew you were into this sort of thing, Dom,” he says. He hadn’t felt right mentioning it before. The two of them have created a _laissez-faire_ relationship and they don’t meddle in the literal affairs of the other. They live together, love each other, and cherish their child, but despite these average aspects, their togetherness is as irregular as Roger always hoped a relationship might be.

No marriage and no binds to stop them from pursuing anything else. Roger tries not to flap his affairs around and similarly doesn’t pry into hers when they’re apart. He’s never known what exactly she gets up to. Until now, perhaps.

More than a little experience, Dominique seems to have familiarity with rope bondage. Her eyes betray a kind of deep appetite that doesn’t cultivate without having been fed, and often. Roger thought shibari was just a filthy good time. Yet, Dominique has books, an unusual fever for this subject, a kind of self-control despite her obvious passion. Shibari and Dominique’s intent fixation are something… else. Something Roger can’t categorize.

She shrugs. “It’s been an interest of mine for some years. There are circles I mingle with; we share our materials and photos.” Her fingernail taps the book.

“You never mentioned.” He tries to keep his voice level but isn’t sure he’s managed it.

“Oh, Roger.” She twists a bit of her hair between her fingers, a pensive gesture that often makes split ends crawl up. “This… this level of rope is not so common. Explaining it is difficult at times. There are people who are into this sort of thing, and people who aren’t, and I’m not always comfortable trying to make myself understood to normal people.”

And that’s you. She doesn’t say it, but the implication is enough.

“Who says I’m normal,” Roger protests. “Hardly been given the chance, have I?” Dominique shakes her head.

“I can’t explain it to you. If you’ve never felt the urge before…” she trails off. “I can’t explain it, but I’m willing to show you now.”

It’s an olive branch, one Roger is willing to take.

“Right,” he says. He shouldn’t demand complete honesty from her, even if he is a little hurt she felt she had to hold back any sexual appetite from him. He’s always liked to think of himself as even-handed with fantasies. Now it feels she’s been giving with both hands.

He shifts in his seat. “Not going to end up strangled, am I?”

“No, not if we do it right. I’ll keep a knife on hand in case anything goes wrong. You won’t be in any danger.”

“I can do with danger,” he protests, trying for playful but Dominique’s tone remains steady.

“Not with this,” she says. “You should know, in a worst-case scenario, you might injure your arms.”

Roger… would not like that, admittedly.

“But I am an expert and we will be safe. We’ll talk it all out beforehand.” The hair in her fingers is flipped over her shoulder, the ambivalence in her eyes exchanged for confidence. “It will be about as dangerous as skiing, no? It’s not so bad when you know your way around it.”

Roger doubts sitting in a swing will be as thrilling as racing down the mountainside and dodging slaloms, but he won’t tell her such, not when she’s so obviously excited about the prospect.

“Let me show you a few knots,” she says with an eagerness that Roger can get into. She opens an embroidered bag and starts handling long lengths of silky rope.

+

“When exactly did you get hooks installed in the ceiling?!” Roger demands, squinting through his sunglasses and goggling up at the metal protruding from the white plaster. He jostles baby Felix in his arms, unable to prevent the put-out twist of his face.

“When we moved in and got the rooms painted,” Dominique supplies.

“That was years ago!”

Felix screeches at his raised voice, a giggling babble that has Roger tilting him away from his ears.

She raises a brow, as though wondering if he wants her to be impressed for being an idiot who never looked up. Well, who would? Honestly.

“You’ve brought people back to the house then?” He regrets the words the minute he says them. “Sorry,” he blurts.

She still glares. Lord knows Roger has had one or two girls here while she was preoccupied, and with Roger being away and busy so often he could hardly blame her. He’s just shocked at the things going on under his own roof… shocked at the things going on with the woman he loves. But it’s her house as well. He’s never wanted her to think about it as anything else.

He clutches Felix next to his face and glows apologetically, and then wincingly when Felix takes hold of a tuft of his hair. He mutters, extracting himself and poking his son in the forehead which earns a squeal. At length, his ridiculousness softens her and turns her expression into cautious regard.

“Some, but not since Felix was born, actually,” she says, and Roger can understand that. It had taken time for her to be sexually ready again too. He hadn’t ever known that about women, though it made sense. Just never had the occasion to consider the impacts on them. It makes him feel a twinge of guilt for his sleeping around when she was unable to, but he didn’t know how to breach the topic… He knows even less what to say now that she’s quit the office to be a full-time mother.

What happens when the bohemians have kids?

“We won’t use those ceiling bolts, I tested them early on and they aren’t strong enough for even my thin girls. You’ll be on a welded claw.”

Oh christ. He fumbles while trying to settle Felix more comfortably in his other arm. “Er, girls?”

She grins. “Oh yes. I like to make them fly.”

Whatever else they might have gotten up to, she isn’t saying and Roger has used up all his prying for the day even if it is only ten a.m. But the image of her wrapping up some other lean girl, both of them naked…

“Well,” he starts, clearing his throat. “I hope this claw is big enough, Dom.” Roger’s not a small man by any means. Though he’s not as big as some, he isn’t as little as he was when he was younger and underfed, looking two years under what he was.

If Freddie was here, he’d say _not the biggest I’ve had_ , _darling_ but all Dom says is, “I know what I’m doing.”

And she does seem to, the way she starts knotting up the ropes she showed him earlier into little ladders that halve their length. Roger’s wrists tingle a little where she had shown him a few quick binds. Her hands were quick, skilled. Observing her handling a medium she knew so well was nothing less than magnetic. Confident women have always done it for Roger. Dominique is the best of that, and this is an appealing extension.

“You like making your girls fly,” Roger murmurs. It gives him a little thrill to think. Maybe later, after he demonstrates with his hands how sorry he is for prying into her business, he might get the details.

“I told you it’s thrilling for the person who gets tied up. It’s a different thrill for the person tying.”

“It is fun being in charge.” Roger knows that pleasure all too well, even if the former still escapes him.

“It’s fun being out of charge too,” she murmurs.

“Doesn’t have to be all one way or the other, does it?” Roger’s never much cared for one-sided affairs, women who make him do all the work. _Lazy,_ Dominique teases him. But it’s only that Roger likes to know that they’re in it together, that whoever he is with is enjoying and giving back for the energy he’s putting in. Something about performing for the audience and their closed circuit of energy exchange plays upon his mind and concentration even in the bedroom.

“It isn’t one-sided, but the control… Roger, I might act differently when I’m tying you up,” Dominique adds, and there’s a slant to her eyes, an unrelenting feeling. “When we’re doing this, I have to have control of the whole set-up for your safety. So, I might be more…”

“Domineering,” Roger supplies. “That’s all right.” It isn’t their usual dynamic. Dominique is a strong woman, but she shudders apart so beautifully for him, lets him pull and work her until she is beautiful shambles. Now and again, she’ll sit on top of him, tap his face and order him to eat her out. Still, between Roger’s humor and his boyish eagerness, he usually manages his way into control. It comes naturally to him as he roots around for pleasure and a good time. He always has a playful hand in its creation. And there’s a reason he’s no Ringo sitting in the back and watching Lennon and McCartney have at it. He’s well earned his 25% of the band, and it isn’t through a lack of controlling tendencies.

He trusts Dom though, and admittedly the thought is a little hot. She’s rather a small thing, very slender though her arms have strength to them… from tying up blokes, it seems…. Or women.

Things he should ask her after they go through with this, when Roger is _in_ instead of _out_ of this phenomenon in her life. He loves their separate interests and the way she’ll never bow completely to his own, but this occupies a larger part of her life than he ever realized before. He’s game for it, he hopes she’ll see that. It doesn’t have to be about those who _like_ it.

+

Roger’s mother was already planning on collecting Felix for a grandparent’s visit in Truro, so they settle on the weekend.

“Are you ready to try?” Dominique asks when they wake Saturday morning. She’s a beautiful sight on the bed, strands of her dark hair tangled on the pillow, nose scrunched from where he kissed her before brushing his teeth. More than anything, she’s beaming. Dominique is usually slow to wake, but today she’s all but humming in her eagerness.

Aside from squinting at all the ceilings in his house, Roger admittedly hasn’t been thinking too much about being tied up. Other, heavier things distract his mind. Music, finances… nightmares. Since hearing about Dominique’s theory of unwinding, and seeing how affixed she is on the idea of tying him up, Roger hasn’t had the heart to admit he hardly thinks it will do any good. Trussing him up and putting him in a swing is by far the strangest advice of all for nuclear nightmares. She’s his girlfriend though, and if he can set her mind at ease by getting off on her being controlling, then he’ll bite the bullet. He only hopes she isn’t disappointed when the dreams persist.

“Yes, let’s,” he says at length.

“Just the dressing gown will do, then.” Dominique slips out of bed before Roger can even think of a million clever-tongued ways to keep here there. Roger pulls the dressing gown on, distracted by the flash of her own black silk slipping through the bathroom doors.

They eat a breakfast of toast and poached eggs. Her leg trails up his the entire meal and it sets his mind in an easy, eager mood. The smirk on her lips betrays her agenda, but what does Roger care? By the time she brings him into the living room, he’s quite ready to face this strange challenge.

He blinks at the mats laid out and the furniture pushed to the fringes of the room. She stayed up late the night before, and Roger takes in the fruits of her labors. The room’s quite large, with everything shoved away. It feels as empty as before they moved in. The colored rope lays tied up in neat piles. It’s red, which Roger perhaps should have expected. He still can’t imagine it on _his_ skin, but it’s fine.

A big, welded frame sits over the mats like a claw of some kind and Roger almost laughs for how silly it looks. Like an a-frame of a house or the stripped skeleton of a car, almost.

“How did you get this inside?” he asks. “Did you remove the roof while I was last on tour?”

She doles a smile and then reaches for her coils of rope, undiverted. “Are you ready?”

Roger squints at the contraption, still not certain how to think about himself hanging in the gape of it.

“Er, yeah.”

“I only want firm yeses from you now, Roger,” she says. Her voice is still soft, but there is something unyielding there that has Roger’s eyes snapping to her. _Oh._ Taking control, is she?

“Yes.” He tries to keep the eager smirk off his face. It’s hard when he knows he’s about to get off; harder still when she’s so into what’s happening.

“How good of you. Come here, take off your dressing gown.”

Roger unties the front and only just resists a sultry, silly pose as he lets it fall down his shoulders. He likes making her laugh any day of the week, but he wants her to see him taking this seriously considering how much she’s worked him up to it. It’s just manners, isn’t it? To try and take the other person’s strange sexual activities seriously. Dominique has certainly indulged more than a few of Roger’s fantasies. Speaking of, Dominique treads closer, her dark hair skirts silky over her dressing gown and Roger wants to know what’s underneath. She left to change after breakfast and he’s optimistic it’ll be a treat.

He tosses his dressing gown to the chair and lets himself stand naked. Nothing to be embarrassed about, and certainly not with her.

“You could have let me help you move the furniture,” he says, rubbing his feet on the carpet before stepping onto the mat.

“Unless you have something intelligent to say, like ‘stop’ or ‘more’, try to keep quiet. Are you ready to begin?”

His tongue licks out over his lips at her words and her tone, but Dominique’s expression is narrow.

“Yes.” At the permission, she pulls on the red rope strands and soundlessly undoes the neat ladders she tied before.

Coils of rope in hand, she strides closer. Her eyes work up and down his bare body, his loose posture, the hand drumming on his hip. There’s that pleasant darkness in her expression Roger is growing more familiar with, hunger almost.

Dominique kisses him, a sudden rush of passion contrasting the coolness of her exterior. Roger barely has time to respond, his hands half-rising to hold her before she catches his wrists and guides them down again. He groans as she breaks off the kiss. She doesn’t indulge in his beseeching pout. Instead, Dominique circles around to his back, and she starts to tie.

One hand stretches around his stomach and loops the rope across his core. The coil of shiny rope is cool on his bare skin and he can feel her brushing against him, the quick dexterity of her thin fingers working. Her knots jerk him to and fro as she ties a hitch.

“Is that too tight?” she asks, two of her fingers tracing between the cool stretch of rope and Roger’s skin around his lower back and stomach. Roger feels a slight shiver and it takes a moment for him to evaluate the new tension and respond.

“No.”

She pets his hip and moves on to make another few lines up his body. It makes a little diamond over his bellybutton.

“Is this too tight?” Her fingers whisper over the skin of his stomach.

“No.”

She loops around his arms next, and line by steady line, they become ensnared against his body. Trapped. He flexes against the binds, can’t quite help himself from testing these limits, but they hold strong. It’s strange, the red rope never seemed strong before, but twisted around him he’s beginning to appreciate its tensile strength. She checks the tension of each rope with her fingers, painting hot trails of touch that Roger wants to lead somewhere more southern.

She maneuvers the front of him around instead of walking and Roger almost huffs for being treated so much like a doll, but then the ropes are crossing over his chest, outlining the faint lines of his pectorals. Her fingers trace beneath each rope multiple times, two fingers skimming and dipping over his flat nipples.

“Is that too tight?” She asks every bloody time.

“No.” It’s more of a groan now. God, but she’s touching him so much. He’s trying to be good, but these little touches, the knowledgeable way she’s manipulating his body; it’s maddening.

She knows her stuff— Roger hasn’t noticed anything that feels too tight although of her own volition she redoes a few sections to her satisfaction. It’s slow but attentive work, her hands a steady presence on him. When she finishes, she weaves the remaining rope around the diamonds she’s tied around his stomach and then starts pulling another length out.

“Is anything too tight?”

“No.”

“Do you want to continue?”

Roger gives her a meaningful look. God, as though ‘stop’ is even in his everyday lexicon. ‘Yes,’ and ‘faster’ are more his style. She waits though, weathers his pout with a coolness that makes him… he doesn’t know what, chastened somehow.

“Yes,” he says at length, feeling foolish.

“Good. I’ll start on your hip harness. This is going to be where I’m going to keep most of your weight, so keep still, cher.”

Roger swallows. He should be nervous, but when Dominique kneels before him, he can’t quite muster any anxiety. God, but this is a bit hot. He’s never been much for intricate rituals with sex. He doesn’t mean foreplay, he can do that forever, but anything that prevents him from having his hands on the woman he’s with doesn’t interest him… This, he thinks, not for the first time, is something else. It’s the tension of her hands, the way she’s taken control of each part of him she binds. Those maddening fingers running over his skin along with the pressure of the ropes.

There’s a guilty pleasure in having the whole of Dominique’s attention on him. He craves and relishes the fullness of it, wants to preen. Yet, it makes him feel almost too in-focus, or too greedy somehow. He doesn’t like one-sided lovers, but her eyes are focused, and almost dilated. And Roger takes comfort in the knowledge he’d be enjoying it just as much if he was doing this to her. Maybe one day he will…

She shuffles around to his front and Roger isn’t surprised to find he’s almost half-mast. She’s been looping through the softer skin in his inner thighs and he’s never really thought about that place before now, with the rope curling around him. Her fingers move between the rope and his skin, testing the tension.

“Is this too tight?” she murmurs, skirting his pubic bone. He swears his cock twitches.

His hips certainly jerk. She grins but doesn’t move in to do anything for him.

“God, you’re driving me crazy, you know?” He groans.

She leans in for just a moment, a hairsbreadth from touching his cock with her amused lips.

“Yes or no, Roger.” He feels her breath on him. Roger jerks forward, seeking more, but Dominique’s preempted that, leaning away and watching him, waiting.

“No, it’s not too tight.” His head feels like it’s been through the scrambler. He wants to reach down and pull through her hair, nudge her pleadingly to bridge that gap between them but—

His hands flex and fist helpfully at his side. He can’t, he realizes. He can’t take a hold of herself, or even himself.

Knowing he can’t have something makes it even more necessary, and he jerks into the air, trying to find that vital bit of friction to help him get off…

“Stay still,” she orders.

“I can’t. You’ve bloody wound me up enough,” he moans, head tossed back.

Her hand digs into the back of his thigh, nails making little crescents and the pain has his eyes startling down to meet hers.

“Behave, Roger, or we aren’t doing anything else tonight.” It’s that tone again, something whip-thin but never loud. Velvet, almost. He’s panting, and he’s not quite sure when that started. He quits his fidgeting.

“Do you want to stop?” she asks him after a time of watching him breathe, all coiled up by her own hand.

He could stop… He bets she would let him pull his cock off, and he wants that, it’s only… He wants to see this through, and he wants to be a good participant in her fantasy.

“No. Keep going,” he says, trying to master his self-control. “I’ll behave.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she murmurs. Her nails release and she strokes the skin she dug into, sending a strange shudder over Roger.

God, he’s getting deep. He needs to pull himself back. Self-control has admittedly never been his strongest suit, but he thought he had more than this. Then again, he hasn’t exactly been honing his asceticism on tour.

He tries to stay quiet as she finishes the harness. It crawls up and down his thighs, framing his cock and fastening around the slight ‘v’ of his hips. He’d trimmed for the occasion, on her orders, and she carefully checks no hairs are tangled. He doesn’t know if she has to pet his hip and pubic hair in the process.

She’s bloody enjoying this, she is.

…And it’s outrageous how much her zeal gets him going.

Lastly, she hitches a few simple coils, and his lower thighs and calves are bound together. It’s much simpler than the chest and hip piece she’s done, just bars of rope cutting horizontally and pulling his limbs together.

She pulls on a loop at the back of the harness, testing how each strand pulls over the full woven product before asking him again.

“Is anything too tight?”

Roger shifts where he stands, the little bit that he can. His torso is completely restrained, arms forced into his sides, breath pushing against the rope over his stomach. His legs are tangled together. He feels quite wrapped. It’s like there’s only one thread somehow, and each shift tautens another piece in such a small persistent way… He’s very contained.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Good, that’s good.” She rises now, hands proprietary on his shoulders. “You’ve been quite good, Roger.”

He’s not sure he likes all of her telling him he’s good, though he’d tried. He doesn’t feel _good_ ; wants nothing more than to piston into her and smear his cock against her silk dressing gown. And it’s belittling, even though he is in a way helpless. He can’t touch her or even step closer now, with his legs all done up. He takes the strange feeling and tries to shelve it somewhere in his mind, but it doesn’t slot anywhere. It’s too different. He abandons his task, too distracted by the force of Dominique’s trajectory and presence to be anything but concentrated on her and their game.

Her hands don’t stop trawling just because he’s tied. They follow each line of rope as they stretch across the expanse of skin and rejoin and knot somewhere else on his body, like a highway map intersecting at major cities.

She palms the diamond windows on his back, revealing tactilely the pattern he can’t see. Her fingers tug on the network around his biceps and he tenses, flexing for her and making the often-invisible drummer’s muscle appear. He grunts when she releases. Dominique hums, pleased.

It makes him feel like some sort of sculpture she owns, something she can touch and appreciate yet cannot touch or appreciate back. It should make him shift uncomfortably but it doesn’t. Instead, he’s strangely gratified; he feels alluring.

Seeming satisfied with the tension, Dominique steps past him.

The shifting of fabric tells him she’s shucked her dressing gown and Roger jerks his head back in time to see it hit the floor.

Secretly, impossibly, Roger hoped that she might take all of his subtle nudges about her done up in ropes into account and reveal a pretty latticework beneath her dressing gown for his tongue to play over. Naturally, that isn’t what she’s wearing. Instead of that, or even lingerie, she’s wearing a little black dress cut high on her thighs. It shouldn’t make him groan, it’s just the sort of thing she wears to casual business functions or parties, but it elicits the image of her at work, the competence he’d gleaned when they first met, fine nails drumming on her planner. The cut is modest at the top and emphasizes the skin flashing below, her beautiful thighs. He wonders if she’s slick down there, wants more than anything to reach out and feel—

“Relax, you’re straining the rope.”

Roger tries to unclench his hands pulling helplessly at his sides. She uncurls them for him, stroking the inside of his palm and smiling. Her tight black business dress emphasizes his undress, makes him feel the chill over his body in the gaps between the ropes. He’s embarrassed to be put on display, although being seen naked has never bothered him up to now. He knows he looks good, has had that comfort for a large part of his adult life, but this exposure is different. There’s no posturing or teasing or redirecting with his limbs bound, only the vulnerability he feels at her hands touching and examining him any way she likes.

Roger doesn’t like feeling embarrassment really, so when it starts to fold over itself and become something different yet hotter, he leans into it. He stretches out for her to see, presses back into her hand as she pokes and prods. Her fingers flick against his nipple and it has his head dropping to his chest to peer down at her capable hands on him. At the same time, he scopes his length and it’s almost overwhelming. Red rope tracks his lightly defined pectorals, it wraps near taut around his ribs and softer stomach… red netting that loops around his thighs and frames his eagerly chubbing cock.

God, he wishes he had a mirror or camera to see her hand, possessive on him, and him— him helpless. The thought makes him feel more ashamedly hot, wishing there was evidence of him at her mercy. It’s different than embarrassment, this melting feeling.

Some distant part of his mind not preoccupied with how rapidly he’s hardening with only her slightest touches realizes that this is perhaps what she meant by taking pleasure in being out of control. Although, Roger comforts himself, he isn’t really. This is some little game between them, even if it is an odd but hot one.

The remembrance galvanizes Roger. It’s not a bad kind of embarrassment anymore, really, but Roger fights against the dragging feeling. He doesn’t want to go all the way under her spell and make her do all the work. Not when he likes playing so much.

“Dom, come on,” he starts. His voice is low and rough in a way that often pulls her into his gravity. “Are you going to tease me all day?” He licks his lips. “Want me to beg for you?” Roger could do that, would probably grin all the while, tease her loose. Whatever she wants if she’ll let him investigate with his mouth how wet she is under that pretty dress.

For a moment, he imagines he’s reeled her in but—

“No.” When she steps away, he grunts in displeasure. “No, I want to make you fly, Roger.”

Roger feels thick as a brick when he remembers that this isn’t all there is to their game.

The arousal and embarrassment temper as he eyes the metal contraption he’s to hang from. It’s not particularly tall. Perhaps two meters above the ground. Earlier, when he asked whether he’d be able to see the ceiling’s moulding she’d laughed and said he’d only be about a meter and a half or so from the ground, just barely high enough that he wouldn’t be able to touch. The equivalent height of his bedstead. Hardly thrilling. Feels more like a parody really, and he’s glad now there’s no camera to capture this (frankly) stupid spectacle.

“Do you still want to do that, cher?” Her voice is soft here, unlike the firmness she’s kept well-in-hand for the rest of the time.

Roger wishes it were as simple as calling it off because he thought it was silly… But he remembers the photos in the book. He’s tortured himself in the week since she mentioned it, trying not to wonder whether she’s made any contributions to the collection with blokes or ladies she’s hung up. Whether she revisits those private memories. She’s had men before who have done this, and Roger’s pride won’t let him fall back into the disregard of someone who doesn’t _get it._

Roger wants to enter that space he’s seen on the pages, inject himself into this important aspect of her life, even if understanding is all he reaps from this strange sowing. At this point, he’s not sure whether he’ll get off on being put in such a ridiculous position (to say nothing of his nightmares), but he can probably feign enjoyment well enough. Won’t be hard when she takes him in hand and they finally get to unwinding together.

He only… he wants to see her from the angle that so many others have.

Roger stops the ‘might as well’, from escaping, remembering her earlier words, and instead tries to look contrite and obeying even though he hardly feels it now.

“Yes.”

The twitch of a smile to her lips tells him she isn’t persuaded. “Are you certain?”

He resists some flavorful words. “Yes.”

“You aren’t flying, but I’ll get you there yet,” she murmurs, and then louder. “Let’s get you on your knees.” She holds up his shoulders as he awkwardly settles on his arse under the maw of the claw. He nearly overbalances, this tied up. His thighs bulge against the confines of the ropes as he pivots into a kneel. The tension almost bruising and a little numb. Luckily, Dom is threading through the rope to lift him.

God, he wants her fingers on him already. Still, he kneels patiently, eyes latched to her thighs as she threads rope through one of the back loops attached to his hip harness. She weaves it through several catches on the side of the claw. Then, her strong arms flex as she starts pulling.

There’s a moment where Roger’s balanced perfectly on his knees and then the lurch as he feels the force pulling at the back of his hips forcing his face forward. He reaches his hands blindly out to catch himself but they only flex at his sides—

Dominique is there, rope hitched around her forearm and bicep, her free hand steadying his shoulder and lowering it slowly to prevent him from face planting.

“Jesus fucking christ!” He puffs out a breath among a long line of obscenities. She told him it would be easier to start face down on the mat, but he’d insisted he kneel. He didn’t bloody know it would be so disorienting.

“I have you,” Dominique says, a calm balm. His eyes flicker over to her, to the composure of her expression and the perfect tension she maintains in the rope. He feels an idiot for overreacting when she obviously anticipated this and had it in hand.

“I’m fine,” he blurts.

“Yes, you’re very good.” She strokes his arm, fingers dipping beneath the rope. “I’m going to continue now, okay.”

He nods, terse. Mentally, he knows they discussed all of it, but it was no substitute for the vertigo of being forced forward so suddenly without the ability to catch himself. It goes against nature. Still, he knows better what to expect now and braces himself as she takes the rope and winds it up again. The tension through a levy draws his head up higher and further away from the floor until his legs barely scrape against the mat.

His body is a diagonal line barely anchored. He blinks hard at the sensation, like being young and toeing the deep shoreline, bouncing to keep his head above saltwater. Dominique fastens the ropes off, tying them to the side of the mount before picking up another length of rope. His mind isn’t working fast enough to put the pieces together until she loops it through the strings on his lower calves.

His last tether to the earth is plucked out from under him, and Roger’s freefalling—

He’s not, he reminds himself, breathing hard. Dangling, not falling.

Roger blinks at the blurry ground, feeling sweat beading around his hairline. He laughed at the height before, but it feels much more intense from this perspective. The idea of being high up on the ceiling like he first proposed makes his stomach flip. He tries not to let his fear swarm him even as he feels the pendulous position. God, _he’s not falling_ and yet he feels a moment from crashing down.

Dominique adds a third rope to either end of his back piece and takes her time adjusting all three ropes. Blood rushes through his head as she angles him further towards the ground and he hisses. It’s as though she’s manipulating a marionette, the way she plays with his relationship to gravity and the looming floor. Then the second rope comes into play, lowering his bottom half and balancing out his head. The meat of the tension is in his hips, but there’s enough pressure on the ropes around his biceps and calves to remind him of their presence.

Distantly, he can hear her fastening off, but Roger’s concentrating on breathing. Each hard pulse of his breath sets the ropes moving. Just the slightest bit, but the sway is magnified this high up. He begins to feel the faint panic of _how strong are these ropes really_ and _what if he falls?_ He doesn’t want to keep jostling here, like a leaf in the wind so he tries to cultivate his stillness, tries to control his breath. Singing and drumming rely completely on the breath, and yet this simple control seems to have slipped from his hands when they were bound, and he doesn’t know how to—

The warm press of Dominique’s hand on his shoulder startles him from his thoughts. “Breathe. I have you.”

Her hand stills him while he pants greedily. His eyes seek her face, and he feels relieved to see the cool control there. Right, she knows what he’s doing. The thought that she must’ve tied up dozens of men comes as a comfort now. He tries to get over his distrust of the ropes, tap into the rational side of his mind.

It’s easier with her thumb rubbing over his collarbone, a steady, reassuring pressure.

“I’m going to give you some time to adjust to the ropes before trying anything else. Remember you can say stop whenever you need,” she reminds him. “Do you understand? Nod or say yes.”

He forces his head into a nod, but at this angle, it’s more like a bow. With one last glide of her thumb, she steps back.

The absence of her touch is like the lifting on an anchor, but Roger’s better prepared this time. His head drops back down to his chest. He reminds himself that this is just one of their sex games, he’s not in danger.

Any minute now, Dominique will get tired and pull him down. In the interim, he’s just got to stay still, and he’ll be alright.

It’s easier said than done, with the friction of the rope pulling on his skin. The constellation of ties has never felt more encompassing than in this moment. His displaced center of gravity makes his every flinch and breath pull the rope taut over different places in his body. It makes him overly conscious of them tamping him down. Not quite a bad feeling or a good one— just strange.

The pressure on his hips, legs, and arms is uncomfortable, but not painful in the ways Dominique warned him about. He tries to tense and shift around the discomfort but can’t avoid it without sending himself wavering again. His muscles tense further against the feeling, a burn already building. However, Roger’s no stranger to aches and muscle strain, the kind that dogs him after hours hunched over a drum kit. He can outlast this.

With a little trial and error, he finds a balance of stillness in breath and his muscle tension. He just has to breathe shallowly, not too often and he can maintain this perfect immobility. He doesn’t have to be flapping about at the bloody rope’s whim, so long as he keeps cool and controlled—

A hand brushes against the taper of his calf and he _wavers._

A high yelp bursts from him, almost quiet for his breathlessness. It wasn’t even a push; he just startled and went swinging left and then back right.

“You’re all right, Roger. You can say stop anytime you want. You’re all right,” Dominique murmurs as he gasps. Her hand rubs soft and warm at the ball of his ankle. “You’re not going to fall.”

He doesn’t know if it’s about falling anymore. He doesn’t know if it was ever about that.

“I need you to relax. You’re too tense.”

He exhales high in his throat. He knows that, but how can he? How can he cut loose this tension when it feels like the only thing holding him up? He’s helpless, tied from shoulder to calf, unable to hold onto anything, unable to stop the swaying. At the whims of every dark thing that’s loomed in his mind and there’s nothing Roger can do to have stillness and keep it—

Because even when Roger’s breath was held and his muscle clenched, he couldn’t help the motion set off by someone else.

It’s beyond frustration, makes him want to throw the table into the wall, the TV out the window, drive headlong into the ocean, whatever he can hold or break to disperse this helpless feeling. There must be something he can do.

What can he _do?_

Her voice sounds then, soft from behind him.

“Relax, cher. Trust me.”

…He does trust her. Even tense and in a sling, he trusts her.

“Relax,” she murmurs again. “The rope will take your weight. I have you. You are so good, Roger.”

He tries to listen, but it’s hard, hard when he feels he might lose every inch of control and stability if he loosens a single muscle.

Dominique’s fingers make land on his arms. “Can you relax here for me? Just a little? Can you do this for me?” There’s warmth in her touch, in her voice. It weaves through the commanding presence she’s bore this whole time, the capable way she heaved him up, how she caught him before he could fall. She’s powerful, he thinks. She’s taken his weight without even hitching.

Has she always been? Roger wonders.

“Relax. Let me take it from here. Let me and the ropes take your weight, Roger.”

He wants to cling to the small, painful shards of control he’s wrenched from this situation, but Dominique is asking for them so steadily, so intently. Like they’re diamonds instead of glass. He remembers her saying she’d need control. How easy it was to give it up when it was only words. Then when they started, it was so gradual Roger didn’t see it for what it was. That each part of him she bound, increment by increment, was then under her charge. Until the responsibility of his own body and even his safety was entirely hers. From the moment he let her lever him up, everything of him belonged to her. He entrusted it to her without realizing the weight of it and now he was panicking… But Dominique knew how heavy it was, even when he had not. She adjusted for it like she manipulated the ropes. And she’s not let him slip yet.

And if he never had control, surely he can release what he’s holding back.

If he does slip down, he trusts that Dominique is here, and she’ll catch him. Just like she did before.

“Yes, that’s it, Roger. Relax.”

He incrementally loosens the tightness in his torso in juddering pauses. She strokes him through it, accompanying soft murmurs in French until he’s slack in the web of ropes holding him up. The relief is overwhelming. He breathes a loud, relieved breath and it has the tension of his legs slipping out all at once. It’s like finally getting off the stage after hour two and getting that cigarette. It’s like moving out of the house his father lived in, the overhanging weight slipping off his shoulders. And it feels like flying, now, just trusting the ropes and Dominique to support him.

Trusting that he won’t break on the land.

He spills into the ropes. Each breath that pulls the ropes binding his arms and his torsos is an affirmation of their grasp on him; an extension of Dominique’s grasp.

The black mat beneath him is blurry, but he’s not looking at it. He’s far back inside his mind. The pressure of the ropes keeps him aware of the many places he’s beginning to ache. The pain is centering though, like when his arms are begging for release, but his adrenaline and drive are more powerful. There is serenity in pushing through that tangle of sensations. And there is serenity in accepting the rope burning over his skin.

Blood pulses under his skin, around the rope. A heady beat playing in his ears with the suck of each breath.

“Good, you are so good for me, cher.”

Dominique pecks his arm and then pulls away. “You’re flying now, aren’t you?”

He can’t answer, but he feels high. It’s different than the high-strung anxiety of cocaine, more languid. As though he’s on another level. Invincible… and completely at her mercy. How both of things coexist, walk hand-in-hand, he isn’t sure, but he can’t question what he knows.

When her hand presses against his side again in warning, he isn’t afraid.

Suddenly, he has the power to ride out the waves that she and anyone bring onto his shores. He’s always thought of himself as adaptable, but this is a different level. It rolls over him powerfully.

He sways with her push and breathes and feels gravity without succumbing to it.

She pushes him again. He stays silent like the quiet and dark spinning of his mind.

A hand trails up his body, setting off a trail of goosebumps. Dominique stops at his face, tilting his head up enough to make eye contact with his bleary, almost wet eyes. He couldn’t tell her where he’s been, only that it was atmospheric and low at the same time.

She glows as though she knows.

“Look at you, flying. You are so good for me,” she murmurs, ever as she squeezes his chin. It washes hot over him, more meaningful than ever before.

“Dom,” he rasps. He leans into her strong touch, taking comfort in the tightness of her grip. He turns his head and presses his mouth against her palm in a clumsy kiss. She hums, her other hand stroking up his sweaty hair and making tufts.

His head is too heavy to linger with her, although he wants to. It falls slack against his chest.

Dominique steps away. Her hands start adjusting the tension points of the suspension ropes. His hips twist under her pulling until he’s almost seated somehow in the air. Then the rope around his legs follow suit. His torso pushes out against the bindings as he breathes, hips half turned. He’s bewildered and thrilled to be readjusted in mid-air so effortlessly. Caught in her capable web. Then she pushes against his chest and the stretch of rope burns as he’s settled completely sideways on a new point of gravity. The rope comes under the hitch and settle around his forearm. The blood pulses down, pooling where his hips ache pleasantly. The side of the room has opened up to him, but he can’t take it in beyond shapes and colors.

In his position, his body isn’t darkened by its own shadow. Roger can look down and see the red ropes tracing his body, the skin pushing out prettily through the rope diamonds. His chest is red with a flush that feels all over. His cock tilts down the side of his thigh, head resting on the red rope and it makes him even hotter, more embarrassed.

“Do you want to continue?” she asks, reentering his sight. “Do you want to go higher, or do you want me to set you down?”

Roger didn’t know there could be more intensity or focus than this narrow world between them. He wants her to keep walking him through this strange swooping, upward feeling. It isn’t like racing for a climax, instead like falling upward.

“Higher… Please. Dom.”

She grips the side of his face, thumb tracing his lips. A tender gesture set off by the perfect, overbearing control he sees in her eyes, the possessiveness in them. Black dress, black hair, dark eyes, her stark confidence, and the hands that seem to own him. It’s soothing, in its way, to be so under her thumb, even though it makes a flare of that mixed-up embarrassment fill him. It rolls through his body, makes him whine as her nail digs into the softness of his cheek, her other hand tugging hard on his sweaty hair.

He feels good.

She releases him. He pants and gasps. Tastes the salt on his lips as he regards her, the center of his new gravity.

“You can always say stop.” With that warning, Dominique presses against his shoulder and tugs at the binds on his thigh to rotate him. Instead of letting him go as had before, she repeats the gesture, until he’s winding around and around.

It takes a few hazy moments for him to put together the pieces. He’ll go spinning out, he realizes. He might be spinning forever, the way she keeps turning him, the ropes shortening and lifting him higher above the distant ground.

He could say stop, and shouldn’t he do that? Shouldn’t he want to wrench back the control that’s been carefully pulled away from him like layers of clothing? It’s obvious to want control. It’s something unreal to accept that it isn’t all meant to be held and lifted by his own hands. That parts of it will always escape and he just… just has to lean into the spin.

The twisting stills and the scent of Dominque’s shampoo wafts in a sharp focus for how _present_ he is. She ducks her head and meets eyes with him again. She stays there, frozen in this moment, her dilated eyes and the tension of the rope and then—

She lets go, and so does Roger.

He might scream, only he’s forgotten fear somewhere. Instead, he lets air rush over his face and body as he pivots around. There’s no tension to release. The pain of his position lessens, narrows to the friction of the rope, and his helpless spinning. He’s gaining speed like he’s going to make his own landfall, but Roger doesn’t need to run or grip or chase to avoid it. There’s nothing to outrun and nothing to protect, no world to carry, unasked, on his shoulders.

He’s alright, twisting and falling bonelessly through the air, he’s safe.

The world is slighter, more comprehensible this high up. Thrill and pain, release. It’s heady. When he reaches the end, the momentum sends him winding up the other way, and then back again. Like a seesaw. He’s not even anticipating stillness, just riding each wave that comes his way, cresting up and down again in this higher space.

The stillness, when it comes, is calm. He’s breathing deeply, feeling the burn of ropes over his chest and stomach, the way his hands are tingling. His hips and calves burn from the pressure but even that is good. He’s never really associated pain with pleasure before beyond a little rough love-making, but the two are so much closer than he realized. They mix and bolster the other high into something saturated and sharp.

He’s hanging again, letting his breath push and pull him. Dominique nudges him a few times, movements that he doesn’t even tense for. Sweat drips off his face; another line drawn on his body.

Time doesn’t exist here, but when Dominique’s small hands come up to cup his face again, he feels like it’s been an eon.

“Are you ready to come down, cher?”

He can’t even manage to nod or mouth words. She strokes his cheeks a moment. He leans into the sensation, so cool on his sweaty skin.

“I’m going to take you down slowly,” she tells him and then the touch is gone.

He hears her unhitching the ropes and feels as his legs are lowered back down to the earth. His calves settle back onto the cold mat. Then, it’s his hips. Panic is the last thing on his mind as Dominique expertly manages the tension and uses the length to come and help him settle on his side before releasing the rope completely.

With the press of his bound forearms, Roger is earthbound again. A small ‘s’ like the woman forgotten on the club floor. It’s strange to feel the mat pressing all along him after flying for so long on string.

The ropes start to shift over him. Dominique is undoing the binds at his legs, whipping the rope off in slinky _shh shhh_ sounds as the knots and hitches pull loose of each other. The now-bared skin tingles in the air, but Dominique’s hands are warm as she pets him. She moves up to his torso and pauses.

“Come on, cher.” She tugs gently on him and Roger tries to shift his leg muscles but they’re rubbery feeling, as though he’s been working the bass drum in the studio all day. It takes great effort to sit up against her. He feels her strong core, the same stomach he’s held a hundred times in his bigger hands. He’s appreciated its leanness, but never its strength until now.

Her hands reach over and around his shoulders and line by line, she coils the rope back into submission. When his arms are free, he doesn’t initially lift them, feeling oddly docile as she maneuvers his wrists and checks the ends of his fingers.

This isn’t like him, he thinks, distantly.

She kisses his left shoulder, braces there for a moment. “I need you to stand up. Can you do that?”

Roger can certainly try. His legs feel better for having rested, but still wobbly when he tries to get them under him. He braces against the bar of the claw as Dominique efficiently unravels the top section of the harness and lets it slip down his legs.

Roger closes his eyes and tries to get ahold of the turgidness spilling around in his mind and making it slow. The metal is cold under his hands as he squeezes, feels a shiver crawling up and down his skin.

He’s naked and cold.

The thought breeches the haze of his thinking, settles low and blue somewhere in his chest even as he slowly steps out of the harness at Dominique’s prodding.

How ridiculous must he look, a grown man naked and shaking, barely keeping himself vertical by leaning on the bar. She must’ve had a dozen men before, bigger blokes who can keep it together after a little rope.

Roger tries to shove the feelings down, but it’s harder after being so shattered. He can’t even manage composure. God, it’s stupid, he feels so stupid and cold—

“Here, come here.”

Roger blinks up, startled to see Dominique holding one of the many, thick terrycloth dressing gowns they use after concerts.

He tries to get his arms to work, to take it from her. He’ll say thank you and then retreat to the bathroom so he can get himself in order again. She shouldn’t have to see him falling apart after what was her fantasy.

She doesn’t relinquish the gown though, instead, pulling it over his shoulders. His shaking lessens as his cold body settles into the warmth. He pokes his arms through the holes. It’s better, he feels more human. He can take his leave now for privacy, but Dominique’s hands settle around his stomach pulling him back into her. Her fingers press gently into the curve of his stomach.

Roger tries to keep the wetness from his eye. God, he’s going all to pieces, isn’t he?

“Come sit with me.” She leads him to the couch pressed up against the wall.

He shouldn’t sit with her, not with his guard this thin, but some part of him that had been hanging on her every word for the past hour has him molding into her side as they settle in together.

Her hands are active, reaching around the side and pulling out one of the salt drinks they use on tour. “Can you drink some of that for me?” she asks.

“ ‘Course,” he responds, unable to help the gruff sound of his voice. It makes his throat tighten up, and he tries to take a few tepid sips even though he doesn’t feel thirsty or particularly anything at the moment except embarrassed and ashamed.

…But Dominque’s hands are warm on his side, around his shoulder and arm. Her body a hot little oven against his. His dressing gown has slipped down and she kisses the revealed skin. It feels oversensitive and he glances down, surprised to see a red imprint on from the rope. She kisses the mark again and bows down to kiss the one on his thigh.

Her mouth is so tender where it hurts. The water finally slips over the rim of his eyelids.

Christ. It was just rope.

“Sorry,” he blurts out. He sets the capped drink down on his side and his hands come up to wipe the tears away. “I don’t know why I’m crying.” He laughs hoarsely.

“It happens to many people,” she soothes. Her hand slips down the collar of his dressing gown to stroke his back.

Roger wants to say that he isn’t many people, that he should have more backbone than that for all he’s accomplished, but the words lodge in his throat. He hadn’t been anything up there. Whatever impressiveness he’s cultivated in his life was meaningless when he was naked and bound. He almost doesn’t know why she bothered looking at him, then and now.

The rush of self-consciousness makes him more upset still because he isn’t like that. He knows confidence is attractive and has honed it, but how can he feel confident after being that exposed?

Dominique remains persistent despite his rushing thoughts. Her hands stay on him, anchoring him to her warmth, his lips pressing against his neck, his shoulder, the line cutting into the calf he’s pulled onto the couch with him. She murmurs against his skin.

“You did so well, cher. I didn’t know you would fly like that, so beautiful in the air. You were magnificent. You went so high, didn’t you? Perfect for me, perfect and flying. So good, so perfect. Cher.”

He wasn’t anything of those, but somehow his head ends up leaned against hers like he might hear the words sooner that way. She cups his hands in hers, rubbing warmth back into them and kissing their locked knuckles until Roger’s quite cried out. The blue sweeping lowness from before has turned over into something a little warmer under her plain appreciation and steadfastness.

He remembers that she’s already seen him on the bad nights, that he’s held her through her own personal storms. He’d seen her give birth… Surely that’s something just as bare? The reminder gives him the beginning of equilibrium.

He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth and earns a smile.

“How do you feel?”

How to even begin answering that. “Tired.” he tries.

“Does anything hurt?”

Roger’s toes curl against the couch cushions. His body aches, little twinges along his flesh that remind him of the pressure they were under when he was done up. Even the parts of his arms that weren’t in contact with the rope feel strained for all his fidgeting against the bonds. But it doesn’t feel bad exactly. It reminds him of what it was like to be hanging above it all and centered. He feels quite far from that now.

“No, I don’t think so. You gave me a good going over.”

Dominique hums in acknowledgment, she seems eased by his words. Her hand squeezes against the side of his hip. Roger snakes his arm behind her to echo the gesture and pull her closer to him. He senses the measure of her body against his, so small and yet capable.

He points his eyes forward. “You didn’t say it would be like that.”

“I told you it was intense.”

Roger makes a face. He knows intensity— intense sex, intense sports, intense physicality. None of it extracted the level of surrender required for being tied up and at her mercy.

“This was a little more than intense.”

“What should I have said?” she asks, then curious, “No, how would you describe it?”

He tries to organize his thoughts. How to begin putting it into words…

“It was like… it was like I was holding onto something for so long that I forgot I even had it. When you tried to take it from me, I fought you. But, it’s not natural to let go like that.”

His eyes flicker to hers, feeling a little silly for his metaphor, but Dominique’s eyes are attentive and patient.

“But once I let you have it, it was like I was flying. It was like you took all the gravity from me. Everything after was just… effortless. My hands were empty and I could hold more or feel more. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was clinging and fighting for.”

“I understand.”

And Roger can finally parse out the look in her eyes and place it within his new experiences. Control and release, holding the reigns for someone else to lead them to the fringes of experience. It was more than she could explain. He understands now too. Knowing Dominique again, understanding this part of her sends a wave of relief through Roger. This is not something that will come between them.

He feels settled after finally getting these thoughts off his mind, after understanding that the higher place is part and parcel of the experience, and so is surrender. He finally finds the place to shelve this in his head, and it’s something for both of them. For her to take and him to give. The chill fully slips from his body as he sorts through the lingering adrenaline and mentality of the experience.

He still doesn’t know how he felt about surrender. It isn’t in his nature, makes him anxious for anyone who might be peeking through the windows… but Dominique loves him. Dominique trusts him and created with him the kind of irregular love he always dreamed of. No one else could love so flexibly but her. So maybe it isn’t so bad. If he can trust anyone to catch him or Felix no matter what happens, he knows it can only be Dominique.

He gives her a long look over. She looks almost as boneless as he feels. Her hair clings to the couch with static, giving it a frizzed look. She isn’t the perfect control that he remembers before, but to see that strength was something of a revelation. Her irises are still so narrow and he wonders…

He lets his hand slip down over her thigh and rests there. Her eyes flash and then her legs fall slightly apart in languid invitation. His hand follows down the curve of her thigh and climbs under her dress. There’s dampness in the fabric, in her pubic hair, and part of him is almost shocked that she’s as wet as she is. He never even touched her, and half the time they weren’t even touching each other. Yet as he dips his fingers between her folds, he finds her warm and utterly slick. She moans a little, pushes onto his hands.

“Is it really that good to tie someone up?” he asks, bemused.

She sucks in a breath as his thumb slips up the line of her lips and plays with her clit. “If you’d seen yourself, all laced up in red, helpless.” She breathes hard for a moment. “And you were so tense at first, but then you understood it. And when you begged for me.” She moans when two of his fingers slip inside. “I didn’t know if you could, my stubborn Roger. But you gave it up for me. You gave it up to me completely, my perfect, good boy.”

He has that strange crawling feeling like he wants a camera to see himself the way she does, possessed, even though he lived it. He pushes harder into her, circling his thumb.

“You had me. There was a moment when you turned me over and you were the only thing in the world.”

“I know, and you worshipped me.”

“I did.” With a blind, intractable adoration. He kisses her, lets her fuck her tongue into his mouth. She’s messier than usual, a dearth of control after her flawless composure.

Roger drives another finger up into her, pulls back from her wet mouth.

“I still do.”

She lets out a moan and more wetness slips down his hand. He pets her gently through the end of her orgasm, relishing the euphoric contractions of her face and the twitching around his fingers.

When she puts a hand to his forearm, he withdraws. He wipes his hand on the side of his dressing gown and leans back into her.

When she opens her eyes again, she cuts down to his groin, but Roger’s quite perplexed to find he hasn’t stirred. He supposes he’s used all his adrenaline and energy up (and he’s never been one for sex after getting weepy), but it’s still a little embarrassing. Dominque seems smug. An ‘I told you so’ sits somewhere behind her expression.

“It’s tiring being tied up for bloody hours.”

Her eyes, much better than his own, glance across to the clock on the wall. “You were up for maybe twenty minutes, cher.”

No, certainly not. He swears it was all of an hour at least!

“It’s intense,” she says again, and Roger rolls his eyes.

“I know, I know, you keep saying. All _I’m_ saying is that it would be better with a little sex next time. You certainly worked me up well enough for it.”

“You want to try it again?” Her words are quieter, sharper and Roger rolls his shoulders.

“It’s exhausting, but there’s more to it than I first thought. When you suggested it, I was picturing ham hocks at the butchers, but it’s nothing like that. At least… I think I understand better what you see in it now.”

She kisses him. Her mouth opens, tongue pressing against his. He takes what she gives before pushing back. Her lips pull into a smile against his face.

“I wasn’t sure if you… I didn’t want to assume anything.” Her hand slips up his bicep again and Roger isn’t sure she’s aware of the proprietary way she massages the muscle there.

He raises a brow, lets the smirk curl around his lips. “Nothing to assume. I’m interested, Dom. And if you give me some lessons, maybe I can tie you up too.”

Her lips quirk. “Maybe. If you’re especially good.”

+

Roger and Dominique end up splayed over the sofa. Roger’s lower legs hang off the end as Dominique’s curl, cold feet against his calves. They cozy up under an ancient, crocheted throw her auntie made. Dominique’s head rests in the crook of his shoulder, slow easy breaths catching in the hollow of his collarbone.

“I don’t think… I don’t think I can let go of this worry, Dominique.” Roger’s voice is low and tired, a little beseeching. “Not because you didn’t do everything you said. God, you were fantastic.”

She hums, and he brushes his thumb over her hip thoughtfully.

“It’s not right that people don’t care about the nuclear projects happening here and around the world. I think it’s important that I worry. Bloody hell, I think it’s natural to.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “You would not be you if you didn’t care. I only hope this proves that you don’t need to… to take it all on yourself. Now and again, you can let go sometimes, and you can always let go with me, no?”

Roger kisses the top of her head, her forehead covered with her fringe.

“I know.”

+

Roger’s balancing a tin of baby food on one knee and Felix on the other. This is no mean feat considering his crossed legs stretch across the gap of Truro’s Coinage Hall and the Tate Gallery. His thighs are quite tired really, but Felix is nattering on in need of food and god forbid he isn’t fed _right now._

What stage of development do parents start to teach patience, he wonders… and also lying about not liking the food you’re eating. Felix’s downy blond head is turned quite away, his little lips pursed and tongue poking out as he dribbles food down his front.

Roger’s scraping his shirt with the spoon when Felix’s little eyes go round and wide, looking past Roger.

Roger stills. On his periphery, he sees something like a vapor trail—

His hands shake. The spoon slips between his fingers and into the street below. It leaves both palms for him to cup his child’s face in a rush of adrenaline.

“You’re going to live to a hundred!” he declares, suddenly. “Listen to your father!”

A hand touches his back.

“Wave goodbye to the airplane, Felix.”

Dominque. Smiling and standing between the gap of the two buildings like it’s nothing.

Felix obeys her, always does listen to Dom better. Roger leans his head against her thigh as she strokes through his hair. He wipes Felix’s face clean and somewhere, down below, the earth scurries and turns, unawares.

**Author's Note:**

> .  
> .  
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> Thank you for reading! I hope you felt something from this mess I offer. 🙇
> 
> so, Dom should have started with floorplay first, and then worked up to suspension, but I did not want to write another 40k BDSM exploration fic, and I'm sorry about that hahaha. also worth saying i don't think they had an open relationship although for the absence of proof it's technically *possible*
> 
> [Here's](http://kinkfriendly.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/kinkfriendly_org_rope_101_compressed.pdf) a good pdf intro for rope bondage itself though I recommend looking elsewhere for more aftercare info.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who read this(???). Bother me at [TUMBLR](https://rock-it-tonight.tumblr.com/) and feel free to interact in comments, I'd appreciate it. 🙇💖🙇


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